Two States Defy DC on No Child Left Behind

No area of life cries out for local control louder than the education of our children.

With a vast diversity of student populations, learning styles, cultural makeup, socioeconomic demographics and countless other factors, it only makes sense that local people, who understand the needs of the community, make decisions on how to educate their kids.

But as in most other areas of life, politicians and academic elites think they know whatâ€™s best, and they utilize the mechanisms of the federal government to centralize, standardize and homogenize education all across this vast and diverse nation.

In 1979, Congress created the Department of Education, a blatant overstep of its authority. The Constitution grants the federal government no power to regulate, oversee or take any role at all in education.

Zero. Zilch. Nada.

It doesnâ€™t even hint at it. Can anybody argue that teaching children falls into sphere of responsibility that James Madison assured ratifiers the Constitution left to the states?

â€œThe powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.â€

Butwannabe education central planners ran over Constitutional constraints like a beat up pickup truck rolling over speed bumps in a Walmart parking lot.

At the time, even some Democrats recognized the overreach.

â€œNo matter what anyone says, the Department of Education will not just write checks to local school boards. They will meddle in everything,â€ Patricia Schroeder (D â€“ Colo.) said.

Call that woman a prophet.

On Jan. 8 2002, Pres. George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law. The sweeping program created national education standards and made federal funding contingent upon states meeting the central plannersâ€™ educational goals. Itâ€™s the classic carrot and stick routine. States donâ€™t have to participate â€“ unless, of course, they want that federal money. Itâ€™s a play for pay scenario.

Like pretty much every centralized bureaucratic solution ever conceived, NCLB counts as a miserable failure. Instead of encouraging states to educate their kids, it encourages them to figure out how to cheat the system so they can keep their snouts in the federal feed bucket.

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch eagerly embraced NCLB in the early days. Now sheâ€™s not so keen on the program.

â€œIt turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there’s a lot of cheating going on, there’s a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it’s actually lowered standards because many states have ‘dumbed down’ their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are,” she said in a March 2010 NPR interview.

Director of the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom observed the same phenomenon.

â€œWhatâ€™s to stop an endless cycle of setting high standards that produce low scores, gradually dumbing the standards down to give the illusion of progress, and then resetting them to a high level again when the deceit is discovered?â€ he asked in a July 2010 post. â€œAt any stage of this cycle, officials can claim that students are showing improvement or that steps are being taken to raise standards â€” without any need to, you know,Â improve the schools.â€

And schools are not improving.

Experts say the National Assessment Long Term Trends tests provide the best indicator of educational performance in the U.S. Despite billions of dollars spent, and ever increasing federal oversight throughout the last decade, overall achievement showed only modest gains in math and a paltry three point improvement in English.Â Science scores fell. In fact, educational achievement in the U.S. remainedÂ basically stagnant over the last 40 years.

Two states say they don’t plan to play anymore.

South Dakota and Idaho both recently informed the feds that they will not raise student proficiency requirements next year, as mandated by NCLB.

They are not asking for permission. They are not asking for a waiver. They simply told the feds that they plan to move forward with their own programs.

Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan last month, indicating the state will implement a new statewide accountability system to measure its studentsâ€™ progress. The federal benchmarks simply arenâ€™t working for the Gem State.

“The law has become a stumbling block to continued improvement in raising student achievement,” Luna told the Idaho Statesman.

Luna said the state will focus its attention on the academic growth of its students instead of worrying about passing a federalized test.

“We don’t have the luxury of time and resources to continue on with the federal law that should have been rewritten four years ago,” he said.

South Dakota Education Secretary Melody Schopp announced schools in that state will also ignore next yearâ€™s federal standards.

“Without making these changes, we believe our accountability system, as it currently stands, would inappropriately label schools as failing. This situation would eventually trigger a number of NCLB-related sanctions that our department simply does not have the capacity to address,” Schopp wrote to Duncan.

Sioux Falls Superintendent Pam Homan applauded the move.

“I commend Secretary Schopp for her courageous leadership on this issue. I am grateful South Dakota’s secretary of education is making a clear statement in support of our children, teachers and administration. In my opinion, it is simply a crime to negatively label children for life on a system with arbitrary benchmarks and no value for the individual progress of each child,” she said in an email to the Argus Leader.

The positions taken by Idaho and South Dakota doenâ€™t exactly represent a principled stand for state sovereignty. Both education secretaries want NCLB reformed, not scrapped. But the dilemma forcing these two states to defy the federal mandates illustrates the complete failure of the system and the unworkable nature of top-down, homogenized solutions. We’re educating individual children, with individualized needs,Â not some amorphous uniform collective.

â€œItâ€™s dumb,â€ Tenth Amendment Center founder and executive director Michael Boldin said. â€œAnd it leads to mediocrity. One size fits all education standards do nothing but ensure most everyone ends up with a substandard education. Those that need something more get held back and those who need something slower-paced find themselves flunked into oblivion. The only ones who benefit are the middle-of-the-road. Do we really want to settle for average?â€

Perhaps unwittingly, Idaho and South Dakota have taken a bold stand for state sovereignty. They chose to stand up for their children, instead of blindly submitting to unwarranted federal overreach. Perhaps other states will follow suit.

They should.

And maybe, just maybe, states will ultimately stand up and demand that the federal government completely butt out off education, a role left to the states and the people.

21 thoughts on “Two States Defy DC on No Child Left Behind”

Beautiful! If we can't get them through the TSA abuse, the War on Drugs abuse, the Union Busting, perhaps through their favorite target we'll get them! It's always about the Children. Manipulate the Children, indoctrinate them, and you'll have the compliant workforce of the future.

Bollocks! We CAN recover through viable educational standards. We CAN educate our own Children. In the process, we'll recover our own Sovereignty.

These 2 States need to go to ebay and purchase a book entitled: “The Story of the Constitution.” Published by the FDR Administration in 1937 on 150th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution in the Federal [Constitutional] Convention, it addressed the question of federal power in the field of education:

Q. Where, in the Constitution, is there mention of education?

A. There is none; education is a matter reserved for the States.

The federal government, by its own admission, possesses absolutely no constitutional authority over education.

Idaho and South Dakota need to send a copy to the feds with a one word note… F-off.

The only way no child gets left behind is by holding back the ones who are brightest. Not every child is college material. We need carpenters, plumbers, mechanics, etc. As much as doctors and lawyers. By pushing all students towards college, those that struggle in school feel hopeless and give up.

OK, I understand this is the tenth amendment center, so on that level it's right to argue that the federal government has no authority to be involved in education, BUT that does not mean that government should be involved at any level in education. That's how you go from local tyranny to federal tyranny, and advocating for collectivism at any level is something that must be opposed.

The only ones that have a right to determine what "education" is for their children is parents, and the only proper action by government at any level is to protect people in their choices, and ensure a free market for education or vocation. The further we have gone in government controlled education (with minor battles won), the more illiterate, the more compliant and the more uninformed and unable to understand rights the American people have become.

I have noticed a huge difference in how public school kids view liberty, family, and society than their non-public school counterparts. In fact, I notice that public school kids are really kind of ignorant and should not be hired whatsoever.

It would do our kids some good if the Constitutional issues we discuss here were part of a 6-week curriculum for 10th grade American History. The subject is simply not taught, and this is why we have a nation of ignorant, compliant people.

It should be more than 6-weeks. It should be a philosophy and subject that is taught to our children their whole lives. How many adults do not understand the Constitution and American History? How many Congressmen and Congresswomen do not understand our Contsitution either? And how many know that the UN is trying to force the "Contract) for the Child" down the throats of US citizens, where they control our children?

The governments duties are to protect the rights of its citizens, not take them away. In a sense if they "make" the kids dumber then there will be no one to protest the over control issues of the govenment in the future. The government works for us and if what they are doing is not working, they need to change direction and move on to something more productive. The education system is rediculous. I think I am moving to Idaho so my family has a future!

Carrot and stick? Play for Pay? How about coercive legal theft (taxation), bribery (do what I say and I'll give back what I stole from you), and when that fails, then there's redistribution of the fruits of your labor (illegal tax receipts) to your neighbors (other states) that will take the bribe!

These gang of thieves should be prosecuted for extortion, bribery, and illegal influencing of state legislators!

One thing I don't like about the way the educational system is working these days is how much they are teaching our children that belongs to the parent to teach their children all these social issues like sex in all the different ways they try to slip it in to their curriculum it makes me sick and also burns me up. I wrote to the Board Of Ed. and tried to get them to vote against standardize Ed. and ask them to get Sex Ed. out of school curriculum but to no avail and the parents wonder why their children know these things when they hadn't told it to them sometimes I think it's an attack on the family dynamics .Well Thats my thoughts on this subject.

I was watching the news the other night and their some queer on there saying it his right to see that all children are taught queer history in every school wheather or not the parents agree or not and if they disagree then the government should pass a law making it manditory. The only Queer history that should be taught should be they used to be here in the country and they were shipped to an island in the Pacific and some body accidently droped an atomic bomb on the wrong island and oh well you know what happened. There are many departments that we need to eliminate such as dept of education,labor ,transportation, dept of justice and any other dept that is costing money for useless czars and all others. WE should demand that ALL meetings be telivised on c-span so we can see who is the most useless is and get rid of you see they work for us not the reverse as they are trying to do in their secret meetings. Obummer said they would be transparent I have yet to see that since Bush left